May 17, 2013

A quick look out of the window – yes, it’s raining again. So, we make a few modifications to our kit – bin bags under our jackets and supermarket plastic bags in our shoes – we’ll see if the water gets in now. Our shoes are still squelching wet through and even though we know the water isn’t actually touching our feet it still feels like it is – ugh, horrible.

We make really good progress to start with as we run downhill for about 10 kilometres, but it is freezing cold so we’re glad to start climbing again to warm up. Surprisingly, the clouds break and the sun comes out at this point, the weatherman has only predicted storms and all manner of meteorological bad news, so we’re really pleased with this unexpected bonus. The bin bags come off as now we’re too hot. The distant skies are black and threatening but the breaks in the clouds give us tantalizing views of the countryside below. We make much quicker progress than we did yesterday and are hopeful of making a good distance towards a better climate – until we hit the killer climb of the day. We’re on a main road and not a back road, the traffic is light, which we like, but as we have observed before main roads go up climbs in a different way to back roads. Back road climbs tend to be in a series of bends which help in a number of ways. Firstly, you can’t see too far ahead and so you don’t know how far the road climbs. Secondly, the gradient is constantly changing as the road turns around the curves. Main road climbs are designed for heavier traffic and are straighter, constant ramps which seem to stretch upwards to the heavens. The really heart-sinking moment comes when the upwards side of the road splits into two lanes – the inside lane to allow heavy lorries to crawl up. The hill we hit this morning splits into two lanes and continues straight upwards at a constant gradient for over 6 kilometres. This takes us an hour to climb in bottom gear all the way. We’ve not had any rain on the way up so I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.

After lunch the roads are kinder with ups and downs all the way, but the bin bags are back on as the rain has caught up with us. They work really well keeping our shirts dry and protecting us against the wind downhill. Not so sure about the plastic bags on the feet though as they still feel cold and wet (in fact, it turns out that they are cold and wet although it’s a mystery how the water is getting in). The other good thing about today is that we are aiming for a town that we travelled through on the way up to Santiago and so we know exactly where we can stay, saving a whole lot of hassle when we get there. Tomorrow will see us cover a shortish stretch of route that we cycled on the way up before we continue eastwards across the Spanish side of the border with Portugal. I suspect we have another couple of hard days ahead with both mountainous terrain and predicted bad weather, but then I’m hopeful we’ll start to see more sun and be able to spend more time enjoying the places we pass through.